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I have always been intimidated by college level math and secretly wished I was smarter to not just understand, but to enjoy it as so many people seemingly do. I

I have always been intimidated by college level math and secretly wished I was smarter to not just understand, but to enjoy it as so many people seemingly do. I tried but failed to attain that level of proficiency multiple times. The mistake I was making was that I was trying to read lectures/blogs/books recommended by random people who knew nothing about me. It doesn't work. The thing is: math is big. It's HUGE, it's a whole world with something for everyone, and not everything in there excites me. I discovered this by accident by picking an easy and fun book about cryptography called (I think it was called The Code) - it was fascinating, it took me to wikipedia and I started to explore this world following my own interests And then it clicked: suddenly even "boring" aspects of math showed me their exciting sides.

d0m 16y ago
Yeah, somewhat a really good teacher helps students to like what they need to learn.. that make a huge difference. When you want to learn it because you like that, everything become easy.
raju 16y ago
Is the book you were referring to "The Code Book: The Science of Secrecy from Ancient Egypt to Quantum Cryptography" by Simon Singh? Amazon link - http://amzn.to/dlNAeO http://amzn.to/dlNAeO It's on my reading shelf right now, but I have not gotten around to reading it. I think your comment just might make that happen. Thanks for the recommendation
- oscardelben 16y ago
  I've read that book although I admit I did not take the final challenges. Still I found that to be a very interesting book, very well written where you can actually learn something useful.
iamanet 16y ago
What you say is very true. I guess the whole idea of this course was to equip students with the necessary Math skills to comprehend courses like Algorithms and data structures especially the CLRS's 'Introduction to Algorithms' book. At the least these notes helped me comprehend that book ;-)

d0m 16y ago

Yeah, somewhat a really good teacher helps students to like what they need to learn.. that make a huge difference. When you want to learn it because you like that, everything become easy.

raju 16y ago

Is the book you were referring to "The Code Book: The Science of Secrecy from Ancient Egypt to Quantum Cryptography" by Simon Singh? Amazon link - http://amzn.to/dlNAeO http://amzn.to/dlNAeO It's on my reading shelf right now, but I have not gotten around to reading it. I think your comment just might make that happen. Thanks for the recommendation

oscardelben 16y ago
I've read that book although I admit I did not take the final challenges. Still I found that to be a very interesting book, very well written where you can actually learn something useful.

iamanet 16y ago

What you say is very true. I guess the whole idea of this course was to equip students with the necessary Math skills to comprehend courses like Algorithms and data structures especially the CLRS's 'Introduction to Algorithms' book. At the least these notes helped me comprehend that book ;-)